Alameda to expand automated license plate reader system

ALAMEDA — Alameda plans to expand its automated license plate reader program to include every entry and exit point in the city.

By a 3-2 vote, the City Council on Tuesday agreed to the increase, with Councilmember John Knox White and Vice Mayor Malia Vella voting no. Vella said she was opposed to what she called “mass surveillance,” while Knox White noted that the police chief had not made the case that the system would actually decrease crime.

Alameda currently has four mobile automatic license plate readers systems used in patrol vehicles. With the new fixed readers, the city will have a total of 17, at an additional estimated cost of $77,000 to $154,000 per year.

“We’ve had multiple police chiefs now recommend this,” Councilmember Trish Herrera Spencer said at the meeting. “The chief has made it very clear that this is one of his tools, he’s enumerated in multiple ways that he’s trying to help [the public].”

The City Council approved the purchase of the mobile license plate readers in May 2014. Since then, the readers have been used to identify stolen vehicles, people wanted for a crime and missing persons. However, according to Rita Dharmani, Alameda police records supervisor, the department has not been tracking the effectiveness of the current vehicle license reader program.

According to data presented by Alameda Police Chief Nishant Joshi, some types of crimes are up in the city, while others are down, compared with 2020. Auto theft increased by 33.6%, from 470 to 628 cases, while robbery is down by 25%, from 112 to 84 cases. A 2017 report showed that Alameda was in the midst of an overall 30-year decline in crime.

Joshi noted during his presentation that no technology exists that can promise a reduction in crime, but he said he feels the license plate reader is beneficial because it is one more tool that law enforcement can use to identify vehicles involved in criminal activity.

He also noted that the technology could mitigate consequences from over-policing because officers would not spend their time investigating vehicles similar to one that they’re looking for. For example, rather than investigating all Silver Hondas after one has been stolen, they can wait for an exact match from the automated reader system.

Most of the residents who called in to the council meeting were opposed to expanding the license plate reader program. including Rebecca Jeschke.

“This is a mass data collection of all of us, of all of our vehicles,” Jeschke said. “It gets all of our information; it doesn’t magically pick out criminals. This puts all of us in danger because of the extraordinary harms that come from collecting location data.”

Jeschke is the managing director of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation but said she was speaking as an Alameda resident, not as a representative of the organization.

To help protect privacy, only police will be able to access the data collected by the readers, using a password-protected system, according to the city. Alameda police also will audit the data annually to ensure it is being used legally.

The council approved Vella’s motion that any future policies for the program must be approved by the City Council. One of these potential policies is how long the video is retained by the police department. Alameda police retain the data collected for six months, but Joshi said he’s open to reducing that to 90 days. There would be exceptions made in the case of active criminal investigations.

“I’m personally opposed to mass surveillance, but if my colleagues are going to go that route, I would like to see that limitation in a council policy,” Vella said.

A study was done in 2021 on the effectiveness of Piedmont’s license plate reader program, one of the first in the Bay Area, by Secure Justice, a nonprofit that advocates against state abuse of power.

The study found most hits on license plates did not lead to criminal investigative leads.

“The data from Piedmont fails to suggest that ALPRs are an effective treatment at deterring vehicle theft,” reads the Secure Justice report. “Despite the market value of recovered vehicles exceeding the camera costs, given the lack of evidence supporting a strong relationship between the cameras and recovered vehicles, it cannot be determined that the camera costs were recuperated.”